Love and Peaches (15 page)

As a child, Leeda Cawley-Smith had had a natural attachment to animals, and they had had a natural attachment to her—cats and dogs were constantly following her home and even squirrels let her get close enough to feed them nuts. Her grandmom, who loved petite, pretty ponies but who was certain that all other animals must be rabid, told her that if she didn't stop luring the animals with treats and cuddles, she'd get bitten and die. This claim made such an impression on Leeda that it created a distance between her and animals that continued to grow long after she had forgotten where it had come from. By the time she was ten years old, Leeda had forgotten, in fact, that she'd ever cared for them at all.

W
ednesday night, Leeda woke to the sound of tiny pebbles hitting her window. She must have been dreaming about her grandmom, because her first sleep-soaked thought was that it was the mysterious M. of the letters trying to wake Eugenie. Sitting up, Leeda looked around the room and tried to orient herself, trying to remember where she was. She wasn't in the dorms and she wasn't at Primrose Cottage, and finally it sank in that she was in her bedroom at her parents' house.

She slid out from under the covers and stuck her face up against the screen, expecting to see Murphy or Birdie down below. But it was Grey who stood in a moonlit circle of grass.

Leeda backed up and pulled on her sweatshirt, worried. She thought about the animals and wondered who could be hurt and how she could handle it. Her heart was still sore from losing Barky. She tiptoed out of her room, blood throbbing in her eardrums.

She slinked past the room where Eric was sleeping, making sure she didn't wake him. She continued down the stairs, gliding like silk, and opened the front door slowly, slipping through the
crack and out into the night air. She tentatively pulled it closed behind her.

Grey was standing near a tree across the grass. She hurried over.

“Is everything okay?” she whispered.

“Yeah, yeah, everything's fine.”

“Are the ponies okay?”

“Ponies are great.”

Leeda straightened up, relieved. “The dogs and everybody?”

“Yeah, the animals are fine.”

Leeda waited for him to go on, but he didn't. She felt recognition then expectation dawning on her. He had something more to say to her. It was the way he was looking at her, like he was about to make a confession. She leaned against the tree to steady herself. She looked up at the sky.

Don't say it,
she thought.
Don't make this uncomfortable.

“I kissed Birdie today.”

At first Leeda didn't know what he'd said. It didn't fit into anything she was expecting, so it sounded like gibberish.

“What?” she asked.

“We kissed.”

Leeda's expression didn't change. But she felt suddenly, inexplicably like her skin was on fire. She felt unbearably, searingly hot.

“You kissed Birdie?”

Grey winced. “Leeda…” He looked lost. His hesitation gave Leeda all the time she needed to gather herself together.

“I don't understand,” she said, her voice breezy while her heart raced. “I didn't know you liked Birdie.” Leeda felt acutely
abandoned. Like she was being left somewhere away and alone, and she hadn't seen it coming.

Grey looked like he'd lost his bearings. “C'mon, Leeda. Be real with me.”

“What do you mean? You're so—”

Grey reached out and swept her hand into his. He looked at it like it was some kind of creature all its own. When he kissed her knuckles, it was like he was kissing a tiny animal.

Leeda felt her face flame hotter, and she slipped her hand out from where he held it. Not quickly, but as if it had never happened. Like she hadn't noticed. She didn't know why she couldn't act like she'd noticed. It was like she was in a cage inside herself.

“Well, I don't know why you woke me up to tell me, but I'm happy for you guys.”

Grey kept staring at her hand. Disappointed. But not in himself. It was disappointment in her. In her cowardice. She could see it clear as day. If she was going to reject him, why couldn't she just be open about rejecting him? Why did she have to hide?

He swallowed. He took a step back. His face settled into a distant expression.

“I wanted you to hear it from me and not from Birdie.”

Leeda stood tighter against her tree. They stared at each other.

“You said you don't know what you are. But you do,” Grey said. “You just don't want to know you know. And it sucks because”—his voice cracked here, as if he was going to cry—“you're lucky. You've got so much more than most people.”

He looked down and swiped at his nose, and Leeda stared at him, confused.

He squinted back at her like he was sizing her up.

“Good night.”

She watched him cross the lawn, and then she crept back inside. She stood outside Eric's door, listening for his breathing. And then she continued down to her room. She crawled back into bed, facing the window with the moonlight still shining in. Her chest throbbed like it never had in her life.

Leeda had never been much into crying. But tears slid down her cheeks. She knew she had no reason for them, and she didn't understand them.

Leeda had had breakups. She had said good-byes to her friends. She had run over her friend's dog. She had been racked with guilt, longing, and hurt before. But she had never felt this specific kind of searing in her heart.

It was like becoming real.

 

Early the next morning, Leeda drove Eric to the airport. She hugged and kissed him good-bye, clinging tighter to him than ever.

Once he was gone, she reluctantly steered a course for Primrose Cottage. She dreaded seeing Grey. But pulling into the tiny driveway she saw, with relief, that his car wasn't there.

Inside, the animals greeted her. A parrot that had arrived that week, cage and all, squawked at her. The dogs—four of them now—launched into happy yips. One of the cats that had shown up on the porch rubbed itself against her legs.

“Oh God, I'm Dr. Dolittle,” Leeda said out loud. She squeezed the door shut behind her and walked into the kitchen. There was an envelope by the coffeemaker with her name on it. Her stomach flopped. She turned it over, opened the flap, and slowly pulled out the letter.

Leeda held the letter, dumbfounded. She walked back into the living room. She looked at the chaos of lives around her, dependent on her.

She sank onto the couch. Tufty, a recently arrived border terrier, jumped up on her lap, licking her face. Leeda pulled him close, suddenly, and held him, sinking her face into his ears, feeling the warmth of his body against hers, feeling guilty that he wasn't Barky but also feeling happy that he was there.

She couldn't imagine holding another person that way. It was love at its simplest.

L
ong ago, Birdie had gotten into the habit of having to walk to think, like moving her feet could supply power to her brain. So now, when she needed to sort things out in her head, she launched into a long hike around the perimeter of the farm.

Birdie had never been all that conventional, but she'd always been steady. She had never been one of those people who did things they couldn't explain. Those people had always seemed glamorous to Birdie—mysteriously complicated. But now she was one of those people, and it only felt foggy and ridiculous. She had done so many things, one on top of the other, that she didn't understand or have any reason for. Leaving Enrico. Living in a tree house. Kissing Grey. It was like she had separated from herself, and the part of her taking charge was a little crazy.

Up at the northwest corner of the property, there was a hollow oak where Birdie used to play as a little girl. She walked in that direction. When she saw legs poking out of the hole, she started. For a moment, she thought the dainty feet belonged to the ghost of her little self. And then she saw the tiny, almost
imperceptible scars that marked the time Leeda had been swarmed by fire ants.

“I thought this was my tree,” Birdie said, kneeling down and peering inside. Leeda was on her back, staring up into the hollowness above. Two of the newer dogs from the cottage, Tufty and Thelma Lou, lurched out to kiss her face.

“I heard your crutches coming,” Leeda said. She shimmied out of the tree and sat up, bark and dirt stuck to her back.

“Why aren't you with the ponies?”

Leeda brushed the debris off her lap, looking around like someone who'd been sleeping. “I just wanted to be here.” She picked up a piece of bark and oddly, Birdie noticed, stuck it in her shorts pocket.

She moved around to prop herself against the tree, and Birdie plunked down next to her, the bark digging into their backs and the roots pushing up under their butts.

“Bird? Grey left for Alaska.”

Birdie squinted, an odd mixture of disappointment and relief running through her at the same time. “Really?”

Leeda nodded, staring toward the house. They could just see the back of the roof from here. It was like being in a different country than the peach rows—all grass and rolling hills, with only a scattering of tall, spindly trees, many of them draped in kudzu.

“I wonder if I have halitosis or something,” Birdie mused. “Maybe I scared him away.” She had read in a fashion magazine that if you licked your wrist and let it dry and then smelled it, you could tell if you had bad breath. She licked her wrist then looked over at Leeda, and the strange look on Leeda's face made her forget about it.

“Are you upset he's gone?”

Leeda quickly shook her head, her lips tightening. Birdie gazed at her for a moment. And something hit her.

“Lee.” She tapped her hand against her forehead. “Oh my God.” She rose up on her knees, slapping them animatedly with her hands. She sank back down, staring at Leeda's face, which was impassive and far away. “You like him.”

“No.”

“I mean…” Birdie rapidly put little pieces together. “I guess I could tell he liked you. I just never thought about it much because you…didn't seem…and Eric and all. Ugh. I mean, Lee, he's not interested in me. I'm not interested in him. I don't even know why I kissed him. It was like…” Birdie waggled her hands in the air like a TV evangelist. “It was like a compulsion.”

“It's not that,” Leeda said, giving Birdie a smile that was both hurt and forgiving.

Birdie sank back, confused.

“Then why do you look like that?” Leeda's face was usually smooth and calm even when, Birdie knew, she was suffering. But right now, she had a raw, confused expression, as if something had been peeled away from her.

“I don't know what's wrong. I feel…like I have something important. Like I can see something about myself better than I ever have or something. But when I try to focus on it, it disappears. It's like when there's a song on the tip of your tongue but trying to remember it only makes it get lost in your head.”

Birdie stared at her, not sure she understood. “What is it?” she asked.

Leeda rolled her hands together, kneading them against each
other. “I don't know. I just…I'm not ready to go back to the city. And that's crazy.”

Leeda looked down at her tiny red slip-on shoes and pulled at the elastics.

“Do you think it's normal, Birdie, to love a piece of the ground? I just love this piece of ground we're sitting on.”

Though Leeda's question came out of the blue, Birdie understood it deeply. “Poopie says everything has a soul. Even a brick. Even a piece of grass or a place. I think when they take down my house, it'll be like when Honey Babe died. It will be like losing someone. Maybe I'm crazy, but that's how it feels.”

Birdie gestured helplessly with her left hand then let it loll on her lap. Leeda stared at where she was still wearing her ring.

Birdie followed her gaze. “It's pretty nice to think of something being forever.” She looked toward the roofline of the house, and then took in the rest of the area with her gaze. “I kind of thought this was. You know, home and everything. But I guess it's not.”

She glanced back down at her ring. And for the first time, it felt completely real that in three weeks' time, they wouldn't be here anymore.

“Hey, Lee?”

“Yeah.”

“Will you take me somewhere?”

B
irdie stared at the Departures board at Atlanta's Hartsfield Airport, clutching her luggage tote, which contained her teddy-bear suitcase and a giant plush peach she'd just bought at the gift shop. She'd had two Frappuccinos, savoring every sugary mouthful, and now she wondered how she was going to manage to spend the next several hours sitting still on a plane. She suspected that she might have to hop up and do a jig in the aisle, sprained ankle and all.

Birdie loved planes. She loved airports. She loved people with luggage. She loved knowing she was going somewhere.

It had been easy to slip away from everyone. She'd told her dad and Poopie she was staying at her mom's. She'd told her mom she was going away camping with Murphy. She had dipped into her school savings for the second time in her life. Granted, last-minute flights to and from Mexico didn't exactly make a small dent. But Birdie figured this was life-and-death. So it was worth it.

On the flight she watched two movies, but her mind kept drifting to Enrico. His easy laugh. His concentration when he
was reading a book. The way it felt when she laid back against him while they were watching TV and he wrapped his arms around her.

Birdie fiddled nervously with her ring, her thumb moving over the tiny diamonds, one-two-three, one-two-three. She stared out the window, looking down at the clouds, wondering what part of the earth they were over, what tiny island, what ocean, and were there sharks directly beneath her somewhere? Or a whale?

Finally her sugar level crashed, and her brain stopped running a mile a minute. She held her giant peach—a present for Enrico—to her like a pillow and tried to sleep to make the hours pass.

 

By the time Birdie landed in Mexico City, seven hours after she'd left, she felt like she'd lived a lifetime on the plane. She hobbled along to the baggage claim to get her suitcase and emerged into the hectic stand of taxis and cars and buses in the queue outside, noticing the change in the air immediately. It was hotter and thicker in Mexico City.

She awkwardly crammed herself and her stuff into the backseat of a cab, flopping onto the giant peach like a sloth and directing the driver to Enrico's family's village. When they'd last talked, that was where he was spending the summer.

She watched the now-familiar highway roadside sweep past the cab, rushing her to her future. Again the ride went on endlessly. It was a full hour and a half's drive to Enrico's house. Her heart picked up its pace when they finally pulled off the main road onto a bumpy side street and Enrico's neighborhood came into view.

Birdie tottered out of the cab, paid the driver, and hoisted her peach into her arms. All the way across the grass, she kept dropping it and having to pick it up, which with her crutches took about a minute each time.

She found the family around back. Apparently all of Enrico's relatives, including second cousins, were over for a barbecue. Several of them looked up at her curiously.

Enrico was standing over the grill with his back to her. But his mom, seeing Birdie, tapped him on the arm. He turned, and when he saw her, he looked like he was happy to see her and at the same time not quite sure she was real.

Birdie nodded and smiled unsurely at everyone as Enrico crossed the grass toward her. He looked her up and down, taking in her crutches, and then leaned forward stiffly to give her a tiny, awkward hug. He glanced over his shoulder at the grill, where his mom had now taken over, and then at his relatives, self-conscious. They were still watching them, but it was only between talking and chewing mouthfuls of food.

“What are you doing here?” Enrico asked, his gaze turning back to Birdie.

Birdie smiled widely. “Enrico,” she whispered excitedly, looking him square in the eye and ignoring the onlookers. “I want to get married.”

Enrico jerked slightly. He looked back at his relatives again as if he hoped they hadn't heard, and then back at Birdie, whose heart was beating wildly. She forced herself to go on.

“I'm so sorry,” she said. “I got scared. But I'm ready now. I know this is how it's supposed to be.”

Enrico's Adam's apple bobbed as he leaned closer. He took
her hand and stared at it. “Birdie…I think we should go inside and talk.”

“I'm saying yes.” She beamed at him, waiting for it to sink in and for the relieved smile to spread over his face. He tugged her hand gently, trying to pull her toward the house, but Birdie only wobbled and stayed put. She felt like it mattered that she didn't move. She wanted to stand her ground.

Enrico finally realized she wasn't budging, and his shoulders dropped, resigned. He smiled at her and spoke very quietly.

“Birdie.” He wrapped his fingers around hers tightly. “You don't want to marry me.”

“I do.” Birdie nodded. “I do!” She had never been so sure of anything. It was like everything that had happened suddenly meant something. She was supposed to be here. That made all the other things okay.

But Enrico's expression wasn't happy. It wasn't even getting close.

“You don't want to marry me,” he pressed, sounding sure of himself, like this was something that he couldn't be dissuaded from. “You only want something to be sure.”

Birdie swallowed. She felt like she was taking a hit. She shook her head. “That's not true.”

“It's okay, Birdie. I…” He shook his head slightly. He looked up at her from under his eyebrows, like he was very sorry. “I don't want to get married either.”

Finally, too late, it occurred to Birdie that this whole grand plan could fail. She could walk away empty-handed. And now the possibility loomed up, huge and real. And not just real—suddenly likely.

She swallowed and, with a sick feeling, glanced over at Mrs. Fiol tending the barbecue. Then she looked back at Enrico.

“But…you asked me?” she said, numb.

“I thought it was what you wanted. And what I wanted too. You seem to need…to know things. I understand this about you.”

Birdie's throat ached. “You think I'm a coward.”

Enrico shook his head furiously.

“That's what you're saying.” Birdie's feet felt floaty. She felt like she could drift into the air like a balloon.

“I thought a lot this summer,” Enrico said. “I never gave up hoping that you would come back. But I still thought that we are so young. We have all this space to be free.”

He was so calm. How could he be so calm?

“Free,” Birdie echoed. It seemed like a small consolation next to being loved and safe. It seemed like nothing to her.

Birdie focused, suddenly, on the relatives across the lawn. Was she imagining it, or did they look like they felt sorry for her? The drifting feeling intensified, and she suddenly felt as if she were floating above her own body. Who was that girl with the crutches looking like a total idiot? And why was she holding a giant peach?

Birdie needed to get away immediately. And she needed to leave with whatever dignity she had left.

“That's fine,” she said, nodding. “I hope freedom keeps you from…being cold,” she spat. She'd been reaching for a “keeps you warm at night” line she'd heard on
Days of Our Lives,
but it hadn't come out right. “You know, in the winter!” She could feel her cheeks flaming and turning red. She lifted her chin, as if she were above it all. “Well, gotta go,” she said airily.

She turned to leave and started to hobble away. She could hear the sounds of the barbecue continuing without her. She tried to ignore the sudden thought that a minute ago, Enrico's family had seemed like they would be her family too, and now they were strangers who probably thought she was a huge loser.

Out on the front lawn, she suddenly stopped short and goggled at the empty road. It took a minute for her to realize what was missing and why. And then, when she realized it, she wanted to kick herself. How could she have forgotten?

She threw her peach on the grass, waggled her arms a few times in silent rage, and then leaned on her crutches and hobbled around to the back of the house again. She didn't look left or right to see where Enrico had gone, she merely spurred herself toward Enrico's mom where she stood by the grill.

Mrs. Fiol turned with a spatula in her hand, surprised.

Without looking her in the eye, Birdie forced the words out. “Um, can I have a ride to the airport?”